Friday, December 16, 2016

There Is No Santa Here

“I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies.” – Pietro Aretino

I did not teach my kids about Santa Claus. They know about him, of course, but I did not teach them that the joy of Christmas is found in a jolly man in a red suit.

There are big decisions to be made in parenting, and the idea of Santa Claus is one of them – to me, anyway. Let me explain.

I’m a single mom. I have been a single mom almost all my maternal life. I take this with a great sense of responsibility. I’ve always wanted my children to know that they can trust me, that they can count on what I say. So when it came to what I would tell them about Christmas, and Santa Claus, and how those stockings got filled, I had to think.

I know some parents get very into the idea of Santa Claus. Some stores even sell boot-print kits that parents can sprinkle snow or soot into so parents can leave Santa’s boot-prints behind to flesh out the ruse of Santa having visited the house. I’ve spoken to parents who would leave a wrapped present on the roof, as if it had fallen out of Santa’s sleigh and somehow manage to get their kid to spot it in the morning. The parents would haul out a ladder, climb onto the roof, and oh! amazingly, the gift would be for their child. Other parents hide presents until the night before Christmas. After the child goes to bed, the presents appear under the tree, “from Santa”.

I chose not to do any of the above.

Instead, I asked myself questions: Do I want to lie to my children? Do I want them to place their faith in something that isn’t real? Why would I encourage the build-up and belief of a lie to my children, when I teach them to be honest?

When kids are little, they cannot distinguish between real and not real, between cartoon and real life. This is why adults have to do it for them. And of course, as adults, it can be hard for us to understand this sometimes (“but it’s a cartoon! Can’t you see that?” – No, actually, they can’t.). When a child is reared with the notion that Santa Claus is real, believes that for years, and then finds out that his parents lied to him, for years, that entire part of his ideology is shaken…because he was asked to believe in something he had not seen. There are songs about Santa. There are images of Santa. But Santa will not come if the child is awake and waiting for him, so the child can only believe, but can never see him. Do you see where I am going with this? This kid is being conditioned to take on faith something that turns out to be a lie. So when that child is also reared in the church, is told about God, and His Son, and is asked to take this on faith as well, how – in the child’s mind – will this not be a lie also? Why plant a doubt for the temporary gratification of Santa Claus that will end, when Christmas can be so wonderfully enjoyed without Santa Claus?

But religion is not the only reason I did not teach my kids about Santa Claus.

The tags on the presents beneath our Christmas tree are honest tags. The gifts are not from Santa. These gifts were not created in a fantastical workshop in the North Pole. I bought them for my children. My children know that they do not get presents just for being good. There is no “naughty list” or “nice list”. Knowing those niftily wrapped presents under the tree come from me lets them know there is no gift fairy with a limitless budget who grants gift-wishes. My children appreciate each gift they are given because they know the budget we live with.

I love the Christmas season: the music, the decorations, and the spirit of generosity. So when my kids were very young and were learning about Santa Claus with their peers, I told them that Santa Claus was not an actual person, but was just an idea. He was the idea of giving. People like to put faces on things, so they made the idea into a person: Santa. (I also told them it was not up to them to tell other kids Santa was not real.)

Christmas, to us, is a time for celebrating with family. We come together with grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles and rejoice in each other’s companionship and camaraderie. The food, the conversation, the togetherness, the bonds of shared history: all of these are so much more important than any gifts that may be exchanged. Because, you see, there is no Santa Claus, so we nourish the relationships that do exist, rather than the ones that don’t. 


Monday, December 12, 2016

No Makeup Shake-Up

“If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams. And you will always look lovely.” – Roald Dahl

This all started three weeks ago when I was preparing for work one morning.

Every morning I would go through my “getting ready” routine, while my youngest daughter came in and brushed her hair with me. I put on my makeup, my jewelry, brushed my hair, and completed the whole hoopla of the routine.

But one morning a few weeks ago, she was mindlessly playing with some of my earrings in the earring dish and just sighed, “You’re pretty, Mom.”

Somewhat startled by the out-of-the-blue-at-6:45-in-the-morning compliment, I smiled and said, “Thank you, honey. That is so nice to hear.”

“You’re even prettier when you don’t try to be.”

She said this as I was reaching for my face powder. I stopped, looked at her, and saw her earnest little eleven-year-old face watching me. Watching my every move. Taking it all in. How to be a woman. How to “prepare” for a day.

This was one of those moments that come along every so often. One of those moments that – as parents – we can either seize and make the most of, or just let pass us right by as if they mean nothing.

This was not a do-nothing moment.

I seized it.

“What are you thinking about? Right this minute?” I asked her.

“I want to ask you to do something,” she said. “But you have to trust me. Because I know you won’t want to do it.”

I was utterly perplexed. This is not the way I thought this was about to go. I was expecting a question, or one of her older-than-she-ought-to-be observations. I was not expecting a request.

“Okay, what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to not wear makeup today. Please?”

Wait…what?

“Not wear makeup to work? But I’m teaching today.”

But then, in a flash, I thought about it. Wearing makeup doesn’t make me a better teacher. It doesn’t make me smarter. It doesn’t, in any way, help me function better at my job. After a while, in fact, it becomes more a kind of armor to hide behind than a palette to enhance beauty.

“You know what? Ok. No makeup for me today.”

Emma positively beamed at me. Her eyes lit up; she smiled bigger than she has smiled in years. Even her skin glowed. She threw her arms around me and hugged me tightly.

Thus began my journey into makeup-free. For a little over three weeks now I haven’t worn makeup. It’s oddly liberating, as if I’m getting to know myself all over again. I wear Burt’s Bees on my lips, a little moisturizer on my skin, and that’s it. I’m good to go.

I am not averse to wearing makeup. But when I do, it will be because I want to, and not because I feel like I am supposed to, or as if it is expected of me. What I have learned in the past three weeks (and counting) is that I am not defined by how others perceive me. It all comes back to learning to love the gift of myself, inside and out.

Every day, I encourage body positivity with my daughters. I teach them that they are worth loving, that no part of them deserves to be hidden or dismissed. The best gift I have gotten was my daughter returning that wisdom to me.


Wednesday, November 2, 2016

I Just Wanted A Dog

“Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail.” – Kinky Friedman

I just wanted a dog.

This will all no doubt sound very self-pitying, but perhaps – sometimes – that’s okay. Perhaps – sometimes – we need to do that. We need to wallow. We need to let ourselves feel what we feel, even when what we feel is heartbreaking disappointment.

I shoulder all the burdens for my little family. I earn the money. I worry about the insurance. I pay the bills, the taxes, the mortgage. I drive everyone everywhere and coordinate doctor and dentist appointments and violin lessons. I do the shopping and teach the kids right from wrong and good from bad and how to cook and do laundry and remind them to do their homework.

I am The Parent. The Adult. But it’s just me. And the weight of this world gets heavy. I am strong, but I get tired. I don’t have anyone who takes care of me. There are no arms I can crawl inside and feel protected by when the world becomes too much to bear. I am not so fortunate as those who have a partner to share their load.

I will take my companionship where I can get it. Even if it happens to be the canine variety.

We have been planning for months to get a puppy. We lost our French Mastiff, Bones, to cancer in March. He was a big, solid, wonderful companion of a dog. He made me feel less alone. He was goofy and ornery, but smart. He also had an amazing sense of knowing when I was ill before I did.

I made arrangements with Lone Star Mastiffs to have a mellow, fawn male English Mastiff puppy reserved for me from an early November litter. My intention was to train him as a therapy dog to aid with my PTSD and anxiety. My hopes were high for this. My girls were looking forward to the end of December when we would bring him home.

Well, you know what they say about making plans...

My youngest has had ear problems her entire life. She began having surgeries on her ears when she was less than a year old. When she was in second grade, she began losing her hearing and had her first major surgery on her right ear in an attempt to restore hearing to that ear. That’s when we discovered one of her hearing bones was completely gone. The first surgery didn’t work so she had to go back in for a second even more invasive surgery a few months later. The first hearing bone implant wasn’t working, so the surgeon replaced it. He also had to rebuild her eardrum with cartilage grafted from behind her ear. I won’t go into gory details, but it was extremely complicated and messy. It was far more intricate than the surgeon had originally thought it would be.

We thought it had worked. Her post-op check-ups showed the ear was healing nicely. Sounds were coming back in that ear, her audio tests were improving. We were excited. Of course, then the house fire happened and the world went pear-shaped. But we continued follow-up every six months until her specialist cleared her. Her hearing wasn’t perfect and never would be, but it was much improved.

Until her ear started hurting again late this summer. We thought it was a simple earache, maybe too much swimming, too much activity over the summer. We visited the doctor and it was a little red so we got the ever-present ear drops and went on our way. But the ear drops hurt and they shouldn’t have. We saw the ENT here and she said the words I didn’t want to hear: “I’m so sorry, but you guys need to go back to Dallas.” We don’t have a specialist of the caliber that we needed here in Tyler. Our specialist is located in Dallas at the Dallas Ear Institute. He is wonderful: compassionate, intelligent, human, and supremely knowledgeable. So back we went on Halloween, 2016.

Bad news.

She needs surgery. Again. The big surgery. Again. Dr. Specialist doesn’t know why her eardrum is failing. She is a medical mystery (much like her momma). For the 5th time in her short life, my daughter will be placed under full anesthesia. Her body will be cut into. I was given this news in front of my daughter. I could not react poorly. I could not be frightened or gloomy. Emma would base her reaction on my own.

On the drive home from Dallas I could not get lost in my head. Emma would notice my facial expressions. She always does. The drive was long. I was actively not thinking about the surgery. As soon as we got home, Emma changed into her Halloween costume so I could take her trick-or-treating. By the end of the night, I was exhausted from a long day of back and forth driving, upset by the news, and had been unable to process it as yet.

My daughter is hurting. And now she is scared and hurting. I comfort her as best I can, telling her that it is perfectly okay for her to be scared, that she is allowed to feel any way that she feels. I will always be here to support her no matter what. I just sometimes wish I had someone here for me. Someone I can lean on.


Surgery is going to be expensive. I have insurance through my job, but the out-of-pocket copay is going to be thousands of dollars. My daughters come first. Of course, and always. So the new puppy will not make it to our family this December. Mastiffs are pricey, and I simply cannot afford to spend the money on him. I told the girls there were no boys in this litter of puppies. Otherwise, Emma would have blamed herself and nothing I could have said would have comforted her. I hate lying. But I love my daughter more than I hate the taste of the lie. It would have been nice to have a companion, to begin training a therapy dog. I had already named him in my head. It shouldn’t have to hurt to say goodbye to a dog I’ve never even met.



Sunday, October 16, 2016

If Wishes Were Horses

“There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.” – Washington Irving

Sleep is hard for me to come by. I haven’t slept through the night since my son died 14 years ago. Most nights are riddled with nightmares that linger over past trauma: my son’s death, the night I was raped, my husband’s death, the house fire. I relive these moments often in my waking life, and having to go through them again in my sleep just feels like a special kind of torment.

But sometimes, the universe grants me a good dream.

There are moments during the day when I find myself zoning out. I get lost in the fantastical creation of a daydream and just let myself go with it. It brings me such relief, such joy.

I have been a single mother almost all of my parental life. It isn’t easy, of course, and I would have preferred it otherwise. But the universe didn’t ask my preference. My husband died and I was left with a toddler and a baby on the way. It seemed like worrying was all I did.

Would I be able to give my kids what I wanted to give them?

Would I be able to make the life I wanted to make?

Would my being a single mother somehow be damaging to my children?

Would my kids be okay if something happens to me?

I want to know that no matter what happens to me, my children will be provided for. This is my greatest wish. I have countless daydreams about how this will be fulfilled.

In my favorite, my girls and I are having a normal day at home when we hear the doorbell ring. I open the door to see Ellen DeGeneres standing there holding a Coke Icee. She tells me that, from one Texas girl to another, she understands tough times and she has come to tell me she has set up trust funds for both my girls. And then she sends us on a Disney cruise. Why Ellen DeGeneres? Because I think she’s a hoot. She’s down to earth, super funny, and genuinely seems to care about people. I have no idea why a Disney cruise and not a visit to Disney World, but my mind threw it in there and it appears that way every single time.

Sometimes, it’s Tom Hanks or Oprah Winfrey instead of Ellen DeGeneres. But the rest of the dream is the same.

The other dream I have is probably much more common: I win the lottery. Who hasn’t dreamt of winning the lottery at one time or another? But I’m afraid I would be very boring with my winnings. I would set up trust funds for my girls. I would pay off my mortgage. I would pay off my siblings’ mortgages/cars/student loans/other debt. I would set up trust funds for my nieces, nephews, grandnieces, and grandnephews. I would repay my parents as much as they would allow me to repay them for everything they have done for me in my life. I would endow a scholarship at my college. Then I would find a financial someone to assist with other investments.

To me, security is happiness. I’ve had very little security in my adult life. To know that my kids will be provided for is the fluffiest, rainbow-hued unicorn dream I have. On those rare nights I get to have a happy dream, it’s almost always about securing the future for my children. It is always my go-to daydream.

I work hard for my family. I’m a single mom. I’m a teacher. I am doing my best to take care of my family and we are doing okay. But there is always that niggling worry about the future, about what would happen to my kids if something happens to me. My daydreams allow a moment of escape from all the Greek tragedy that piles up around me. They allow a brief time of relief from the pressures of being responsible for everything.


In my dreams, my children’s future is secure. That is the greatest wish that could ever come true.